On Friday, Feb. 5, 2021, Amazon, the e-commerce giant, lost a major push to suspend a closely-watched unionization vote at a major warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., allowing over 5,800 workers to decide whether or not to form a union in the first major unionization effort at Amazon since 2014. On Sunday, President Biden issued a video statement on Twitter showing his support for the unionization bid.
Amazon has long fought off attempts to allow its American workforce to unionize, having worked strongly against unionization bids in the past. To date, there has not been a successful unionization effort at any Amazon facility in America. That could soon change.
For months, workers at one of Amazon’s largest warehouses in the South had been trying to garner enough momentum to start a unionization bid, describing grueling working conditions with harsh productivity quotas and a lack of transparency in how workers are hired, disciplined, or fired. Such productivity metrics had long been protested in the past and at other Amazon facilities as well.
In late December of 2020, over 2,000 workers signed cards indicating interest in holding a unionization election. The National Labor Relations Board, the main governmental agency responsible for overseeing union votes, announced in January this year that there was sufficient interest in a union vote at the warehouse, and decided in mid-January that a vote deciding whether or not to unionize was to start in February and end in late March by mail.
This is a significant milestone as union-forming bids had failed to gain traction and start a union at Amazon. The last time anyone at Amazon had succeeded in starting a union election was back in 2014 in Delaware when a small group of workers voted against unionization.
Workers in the Alabama warehouse are now halfway through a seven-week-long mail-in vote period, ending on March 29, to decide whether or not to form a union, after the NLRB shot down an effort by Amazon back in early February to delay the vote over unionization. The company had claimed that the vote should be done in person, rather than by mail. And due to COVID-19 safety concerns, it should be postponed.
The workers at the warehouse, who are mostly Black, have managed to turn a low-interest unionization vote into a nationally-watched referendum over working conditions at Amazon and the plight of low-wage American workers and low-income workers of color.
In Alabama, one of the key sites of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the unionization vote is particularly meaningful. Being a right-to-work state, meaning workers are not required to join a labor union as a condition of employment, making it particularly attractive to manufacturers. The fact that a union drive at one of the world’s largest companies in a historically oppressed state, is one of the major talking points union organizers have used in their campaign which seeks to link the vote to the struggle for civil rights in the South.
Amazon has fought back fiercely on the vote. It has said that its starting minimum wage is $15 an hour, considerably higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, which is also the minimum wage in Alabama. Amazon has said that the workers choosing to form a union do not represent the majority of their workers. It has gone on a massive campaign at the warehouse to discourage people from voting to form a union, pointing out the cost of being in a union, and posted signs in countless places across the warehouse, even in bathrooms. It sends texts and emails to employees pointing out problems with unions and posts pictures on the company’s app saying how much they love Amazon.
In training sessions, Amazon had pointed out the expenses of union memberships and emphasized the cons of unions. There had been meetings with workers who had asked questions regarding the subject of unions, with Amazon representatives reemphasizing the issues with unions. There has even been question about whether or not Amazon had asked the local government to change the timing of a traffic light near the warehouse to reduce the time union organizers had to try and persuade fellow workers into unionization. (The company did ask officials to change the light’s timing back in December, though it was a change to reduce congestion and there is no evidence to back up the claim that it was used to stop the union.)
These could be appealed to the NLRB which could stop the vote and demand a do-over. But the last thing union organizers want is to stop a vote which has garnered so much nationwide attention and momentum.
President Biden, who has vowed to be one of the most pro-union presidents ever, expressed his support for the workers to unionize, saying that the vote was “vitally important” and “up to the workers—full stop” when deciding whether or not they want to join a union.
“Workers in Alabama, and all across America, are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace,” said Biden in a Twitter video statement, without directly calling out the company. “Let me be really clear: it’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union. But let me be even more clear: it’s not up to an employer to decide that either.”
Workers in Alabama – and all across America – are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. It’s a vitally important choice – one that should be made without intimidation or threats by employers.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 1, 2021
Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. pic.twitter.com/2lzbyyii1g
“This is vitally important—a vitally important choice, as America grapples with the deadly pandemic, the economic crisis, and the reckoning on race—what it reveals is the deep disparities that still exist in a country,” the president said, linking the vote to the struggles of economic disparity across the country.
He also said that “there should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda,” indirectly calling out Amazon’s practices.
It is unusual for presidents to weigh in on labor issues such as this one. But Biden’s unwavering support for unions could ultimately help sway the Amazon vote in the workers’ favor. If the effort at Bessemer succeeds, it could inspire workers at other Amazon facilities to do the same, to unionize and demand for better wages and working conditions.
If successful, the new union would also be represented at the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store union, an influential union, especially in the Northeast, where it has fought for decades to help workers obtain better wages. In the South, the union, among many others, was one of the major unions back in the 1960s to help Black workers gain more equality at work, and it has also grown recently in the poultry industry, a dangerous and Black-dominated industry.